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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Donkey Kong Bananza: It's been really fun so far. My husband and I take turns playing the various levels, or he takes over when my hands start to hurt from my fibro. It's fun, and not too difficult, even the boss battles aren't too hard for me (at least so far).
MTGO (PC): I played my first league on MTGO this weekend. It didn't go well, but I'm playing a pet deck and ran into some tough match ups. We'll run it back again eventually.
MTG: Modern (Paper): Met up with a friend this weekend and played our modern decks. I have a Lantern Control deck that I built but never played. My friend is pretty new to the game so it was his first time playing against it.
It is interesting how certain strategies trigger people in this game. We only played one match after he had played all his decks against a couple of my midrange decks. He knew how the deck operates so it wasn't a surprise. But he was opinionated after playing against it. Which led to an interesting conversation on the role that hidden information impacts a game.
I've never disliked playing against Lantern. To me it really exemplified the "rubics cube" element of MTG play and a mental shift on the part of the opponent. What tilts most people is that it attempts to lock the opponent very transparently. Other control decks provide an illusion of gameplay that lantern doesn't. I aways struggled more with the idea that I thought I was playing around this or that interaction, only to have my best laid plans disrupted anyway. Versus lantern I appreciate that I could clearly see when I was locked out and just concede.
Anyway, we reached an understanding that I don't expect him to play against it unless he wants to. But I think it's had its impact, because he been texting a lot more thinking about resliency and how cards fll different roles within a deck.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (PC/Steam Deck): A game I've been looking forward to since it was announced. This game really updated the gameplay and style of 2D Ninja Gaiden. It's pretty damn tough but when you reach the flow state it's fast and momentum carries seamlessly through the platforming and combat. This will be a top game of the year for me.
For anyone not familiar with MTG but is curious, there is a really great video on the history of the lantern control deck: https://youtu.be/I06luPguzrk?si=8TXDZuYqR1-LbJbe
Nice to see a fellow Lantern
pervertenthusiast. Actually I mainly just like variety, and Lantern feels very different from what most other decks are doing. I really liked playing it for a few years until it felt like they were printing too many incidental maindeckable answers to artifacts.It's definitely one of the historically most hated decks out there. Maybe next to Tron? Ignoring things like Nadu and Hogaak that didn't exist for long. Personally I think decks like Storm and Ponza were more deserving of hate (for long snoozefest solitaire combo turns and for locking you out of even playing your cards). I think Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, and Ensnaring Bridge are some of the least-fun cards to play against. But Bridge gets a pass from me because it allows Lantern to exist as a deck. I think you're right that people just have a hard time accepting that they've been "combo'd" out of the game and don't want to concede. I remember seeing a post on reddit where someone had written out 1 0 4 .3a on their Codex Shredders, which is the rule in magic that says a player can concede at any time.
Have you played much on Arena? I'm surprised folks still play MTGO. I've been enjoying Timeless and Pioneer on Arena, the latter of which feels particularly fair. I've been playing fringe decks in both formats with decent success too, although I mostly run into the same few meta decks after a while.
I haven't played much Arena outside of its original launch back in 2018. There are a couple reasons that some players prefer MTGO.
Vintage, legacy, and modern support is a big one. I primarily play modern and legacy and the reason I play on the computer is to practice for paper.
Card rental services like Cardholder and ManaTraders have massive libraries of MTGO cards. I have a CardHoarder rental account so if I want to play anything, I just submit a rental request, their bot contacts me and trades me the cards. When I'm ready to return them I submit a return request, a bot contacts me and trades their cards back. It's very fast and completely automated.
This is a pretty big deal because if I want to test changes to my paper decks I just borrow whatever I want before I spend cash on singles. It's also great because I can play meta decks to help me understand their game plan and make better decisions when I'm across the table from it.
I've considered installing Arena again. I just haven't had a good reason to.
Super Mario Star Road
Have you ever wanted to play Super Mario 64 again like the first time, but you can’t because you already know all the levels and secrets and where everything is and whatnot?
Well have I got a deal for you! This romhack is essentially an entire other Mario 64 game that you don’t already know. It’s got levels, stars, bosses, secrets, all clearly inspired by the original but also their own new thing. It honestly feels like a full-fat sequel.
I’ve been playing and forbidding myself to look up information, so that I can relive that feeling as a kid where uncovering a secret felt cool and I had to really scour the levels to find those final stars and red coins.
I’m loving it.
That said, I’m also playing this with judicious use of save states. If I weren’t I don’t think I’d be enjoying it nearly as much. I think the difficulty is probably a small step up from SM64, but it’s also hard to make a fair comparison because I’ve played that one so much that it’s difficulty has become sort of invisible to me.
Each new world I go to is exciting, and I’m having a great time uncovering the game on my own. This game is a very impressive feat, and I can’t give enough praise to the people who made it. It’s clearly a passion project, and their earnest love for SM64 shines through, star after star after star.
GOG recently gave away HuniePop and a bunch of other NSFW adult games for free, as a protest against Mastercard, Visa and Collective Shout bullying their rival storefronts into delisting explicit games they don't approve of, so I've been playing that (I wish I could have only redeemed this game and not all of them, as all the others in that bundle seemed like trash.)
It's a dating sim that's a mix between multiple choice quizzes and match-3 puzzle gameplay. The GOG version is censored but the game can be easily patched.
How does it play? I think it's... alright. The Q&A side of the game is tedious and is practically required to earn Hunie to level up your traits. And the match-3 side of the game can get brutally difficult at times, and you practically need to cheese this part of the game with specific date gifts to succeed, even with traits decently levelled up.
I mean you could set the difficulty to Easy (Normal is default) but I feel like that would trivialize the game.
I'd be curious to know how the other games turn out if you decide to play them, unfortunately I missed out on the deal. But I'm not that gutted, I think your assessment is right.
They're mostly erotic visual novels, and one is a furry game.
I think the only four notable games in that bundle are HuniePop, Postal, Postal II and Agony.
Personally I consider it one of the best match-3 games out there. It's hard, but not too hard. I've played through it twice (on normal difficulty), following a guide the second time to unlock the secret characters.
I'm close to unlocking Alpha Mode, had gained 5 hearts on every girl but the last one (Momo) requires you to buy a bag of goldfish and discard it in an outdoors area to unlock her. And the item only appeared in my inventory after I had already slept with Venus, Kyu and Celeste.
Took one look at Alpha Mode, saw that the only way to pass later levels and their absurdly high score requirements is to literally cheese them with % Affection gifts, and tuned out.
It's one of those games where the dialogue is second-to-none but the gameplay is meh.
Don't know if this really counts as games, but I've been seen a lot of "Productivity environments" pop up on Steam. They're inspired by the LoFi Study Girl streams on YouTube and bundled with noise generators, fidget gimmiks and some tools like journals and timers. Decided to give two a shot on my crappy laptop while traveling. Mostly because I've not been able to hold focus on work for longer than a few minutes lately. And I've also been playing with the idea of making something similar.
The big one is Spirit City LoFi Sessions. This is pretty feature rich and gives you a ton of options with regards to avatar and decor customizations. There's plenty of fine control over soundscapes and scenes/animations. Even has a little creature collector for pets whete you can discover them by setting up specific scenes. Unfortunately you can only have one in a the room at a time. It's pretty generous with giving you new unlock currency so you can keep mixing and matching elements to get the exact vibe you want.
The bundled music is a passable selection of ambient and instrumentals but I prefer streaming my own shuffle list externally. Timers, alarms and to-do list are functional while the journal has a wonderfully themed interface. Overall, enjoy using it for work and constantly shuffling between different animations or poking at the pets.
However something that sorts of gets to me is how confined the little cabin environment begins to feel after a while. The little backdrop scenes outside the window are flat and forgettable and it doesn't take long to feel trapped in that tiny pocket world. The 3d style could help and open it up to easy Workshop integration but I can only see that happening after a few more DLC bundles. (I am excited for the Trains pack)
The other one is Ithya Magical Studies and is based on one of the more unique YouTube channels. That sort of turned the concep into a world-building exercise. It's actually the tool I prefer, even ifs far more constrained in its functions. Unlike most of the other tools like this, you don't have a lot of control over the character, customizations or even have a lot of say over the ambient sounds.
Instead, you're just of tagging along with a character in a atmospheric hand drawn world. You only really have a choice over a handful of clothing and decor options in the main room. But most of the time you're shuffling between the character going about their own little adventure. Each scene one with its own ambiance, animations and soundscape.
The bundled music is more thematic fantasy mix and the general vibe does a lot to differentiate it from the trend. Journal art is appropriately themed and the alarms have nice chimes and gongs that adds to the theming.
I find it incredibly effective for working on creative tasks. Mostly because the scope of what's on display gets the imagination going. Like art or music from games that don't actually exist. Your brain is constantly in the mode of filling in gaps and I find it carrying over to my own work.
It is lacking in a bit of interactivity. It's actually really hard to swap to most rainy settings because the character model is stactic. Seeing them getting drenched for hours on end is a bit immersion killing. Would also like to see more activities or variety added to most scenes.
For both tools, I find them fairly effective and worth the modest price. Having a lot of desktop clutter hidden seems to curb distractions quite well but still relying on external browsers and text editors does tempt my attentions away from tasks. Would like a limited browser and the ability to import to pdf/text files and bring a limited number of resources into the environment. I suspect it would really shine in multi monitor setups to keep that space occupied until needed.
A friend of mine has also been playing with a semi of related tool called The Merry Fairy that let's you make virtual scrap books and journals. Not my thing but the screenshots she spams our chat with look pretty nice.
Deltarune Ch. 3+4 has ruined my life (endearing) so I'm playing through its inspirations. Right now, I'm pretty early in Earthbound. I'm using a modern QoL patch that moves Key Items to their own menu and shortens some sequences.
It's so whimsical and silly so far. I'm enjoying it. Was also pretty weird remembering that right, once upon a time RPGs didn't just let you steamroll them as long as you did sidequests. You do need to grind a bit in this one.
I booted Frostpunk 2 up again on the weekend because I am a sucker for in-game achievements that are as much a chore as they are a challenge and this game certainly does have a good number of those. The particular achievement I was gunning for was Born Ready, which requires completing all 3 tales (difficulty modifier scenarios) in the same playthrough of Utopia Builder (endless) mode on at least the second hardest difficulty. So that's a playthrough where you have to:
So naturally I did it on the second hardest difficulty rather than the hardest because I like a challenge but I'm not a masochist and after one successful trial run with just the refugee and core factory tales, I had a pretty solid strategy in place and the run went well, almost too well in fact, I didn't even have to save scum. The core factory tale does make things a bit more interesting early on as it really encourages players to blitz the frostland and send out as many scouting teams as early as possible rather than try and stabilize the economy in the main city. The refugees tale was fairly easy to handle if you were prepared to either hold the extra population with a whole bunch of extra housing and a ton of hospitals, or ship off all the workers to settlements to keep the pop down (though you still need to cure them first). The storm tale is just a pain in the ass though, and not in a fun way. While you'll probably be busy with the other tales and economy prep for those first 8 years, the 4 years in the storm are a huge slog. If you're actually not prepared to deal with the temperature drops or the reduced food production or drastically increased materials cost, you'll be dead long before the storm ends. If you are prepared, then all you do is keep the game on 3x speed and try and keep the different political factions appeased with occasional funding, promotion, or granting them the voting agenda. It absolutely kills the tension because you've basically beaten the game and you know it but you still have to babysit these people til the storm ends.
Anyway, I should be satisfied with the game until the "Spectrum" DLC they've got on their roadmap drops sometime late this year, after the console release on September 18 (happy for you console players).
Still playing The Hundred Line. I'm in the second half now and have seen about 30 of the endings.
No specific story spoilers in this post, but I put a spoiler block below for those who don't want to know anything about this part of the game:
Thoughts on the second half so far
On the story:
In the initial wave of articles surrounding the launch for this game, I recall seeing an interview which included an off hand reference to there being 100 fully fledged endings. Having now seen a bunch of the endings, this is patently not the case (and to their credit, the writers don't say anything of the sort in their responses, as that would have been an insane scope).
What the game actually features is:
in the first half, a linear story running for 100 days, which on its own is already the size of a regular game; and
in the second half, about a dozen branch scenarios, each of which sub-branches out into a bunch of different endings.
The vast majority of the endings that I've seen so far are what I would consider 'non-canon endings', and while some of them are interesting in their own right (and many feature their own unique illustrations, etc), they definitely don't feel conclusive to, or necessary for understanding, the overarching story.
The overall experience feels very much like playing a much larger Zero Escape 2, right down to the routes that are gated until you progress other routes.
Somewhat frustratingly, in the few conclusive endings that I've seen so far, there are still a bunch of story elements that are left unexplained - characters will sometimes even go out of their way to avoid explaining them which is kind of infuriating! I assume the intention is that you're meant to play the other routes and get the answers there, but there are also sometimes apparent inconsistencies even within the same route - e.g. you could learn in one sub-branch that the murderer is X, but in another sub-branch where X is killed, the murders will still inexplicably continue (and in other branches, those murders just never happen even though it would make sense for them to, or certain characters / story elements will inexplicably show up in some routes but not others, etc). I wish it was made clearer how much of a common setting the branches actually share and what information can be extrapolated to apply across all branches.
The actual stories for the branches generally vary from pretty good to just OK. There's a fair bit of variety between the different scenarios, but it's hard not to feel like Uchikoshi spread himself too thin by taking on writing for 99 of the 100 routes. None of the branches feel as well written or thematically cohesive as the main route in the first half, and the fact that a lot of the branch routes go until day 100 causes some drag in the pacing.
On the gameplay:
In the second half of the game, once you've finished a specific battle, you get the option to just skip it whenever you come across a variant of it in any route. I believe this was actually patched into the game after launch and it feels sorely needed, because you'll be playing those same battles a lot across the various branches. I suspect that a big part of the ~160 hour completionist play times for this game on howlongtobeat actually came from the poor launch players who had to grind through those fights over and over again.
On the other hand, once you're skipping most of the battles, what you're left with is essentially a giant visual novel with none of the trials of Danganronpa or escape rooms of Zero Escape to break it up, which can feel a bit monotonous during a long session.
The other new gameplay mechanic in the second half is that you can level up social links with your teammates by giving them gifts. This is fine in principle, but the implementation feels a bit half baked as:
You were already giving presents to teammates in the first half of the game to raise a different set of stats, but none of those presents are counted towards your social links.
You need to give a pretty substantial number of presents to max out a social link, and this multiplied by the total number of teammates requires a fair bit of mindless grinding for present-making resources if you want to max them all out.
Improving social links does nothing except unlock conversations with your teammates. There are no gameplay bonuses or unlockable skills like you'd get for doing the same thing in Danganronpa.
The end result is that this element feels disconnected from the rest of the game, as if the devs just tacked it on because they realised you need to have something to do in the 'free time' segments after you max out the academic stats.
I feel like a better approach would have been to base your social link progress on how many of the presents on the teammate's secret 'wishlist' that you've successfully deduced and given. This would require some actual thought about what the character likes (sometimes only revealed by playing certain routes or hanging out with them) instead of just giving them the same gift 15 times.
Re-reading the above, I suppose it sounds a bit negative, so I should clarify that I'm still enjoying the game. I'm just not yet convinced that the decision to go bigger was necessarily better (although I'll keep an open mind until I've seen the 'true ending').
One thing I found particularly interesting was that when interviewed about this game, the writers specifically mentioned having being impressed by 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. You can definitely see a lot of parallels between the two in terms of story ideas, characters and gameplay, but 13 Sentinels was essentially a tightly made Swiss watch in which every component was an important piece of a single complex story. In that sense, this game is its antithesis and leans entirely in the opposite direction.
This was meant to be the last game in my Kodaka / Uchikoshi retrospective series, but Kodaka's next game Shuten Order might actually be out by the time I'm done, in which case it might be that instead. On top of that, Kodaka is apparently now going to write Tribe Nine in his spare time. I'm starting to think these guys are actually just robots...
I've had some time to reflect on the hundred line, and while it's definitely ambitious and I'm glad it got made, I think we can agree it's a bit bloated. Some routes are entirely superfluous. I still enjoyed my 150 hours with it more than I didn't, but yeah.
I finally peeled Dave the Diver off my backlog and been playing that a lot lately. So far it's been fine, but I'm not sure I fully understand all the glowing reviews this got--the restaurant sim stuff is starting to get a bit tedious for me and the story is just OK. Of course I'm only in the first chapter, and I may vaguely recall hearing that the game changes up as you progress, so I'm sticking with it to see if it goes anywhere more interesting.
Yes I played that last year and didn't finish because I didn't like the restaurant sim and I wasn't quite into the grinding either. I got Dredge, another indie that came out at about the same time, and finished that one. Dredge was pretty good but maybe the ending was slightly disappointing.
Further update on Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Previous post
I beat the game. I don't really feel like I got that good at deflecting and stuff, instead I feel like I kinda got away with murder despite pretty stupid mistakes during some fights. I never consistently got good at jumping sweeps in a way where I get the head jump, and still have big issues not holding arbitrary directions and ruining mikiri counters, and I definitely miss deflects and take posture by getting counted as blocking instead and get my guard broken but just randomly get away without getting punished as long as its not mid-enemy-combo. A whole lot of getting lucky happened in boss fights but whatever, I beat the game I guess... I definitely think I can't have the same confidence that I could easily win again like in souls games after the first kill.
Anyway fantastic game. I liked experiencing a more straightforward more upfront narrative than fromsoft's usual item description/environmental storytelling fare. While I do like that style a lot, it was cool to see a souls adjacent game actually do a straightforward dialogue driven story.
Maybe I'll try out AC6 next.
I got burned out after taking 4 hours to beat Seven Spears Ashina. Maybe I should go back to it…
I've been playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and I can pretty confidently say without exaggerating that its dialogue is the best I've seen in a game.
Now, what this doesn't mean is that it's really my jam. There are heavy teenager vibes in the whole thing, it's built around the framework of the teenage dystopia genre. But the dialogue isn't there just to fill time, it is pushing the relationships and back stories forward. It's actually a joy for a game to respect my time in this sense.
I reached act 2 and kinda lost interest. Mostly because I don't enjoy the active part of the combat where you need to dodge or parry enemy hits. I just prefer totally turn based strategy without real-time elements.
Overall it's a fun, fantastical rpg with some distinctly European (good kind) weirdness, Nier Automata flavour-goofiness and jrpg level drama. Too bad the dodge/parry system isn't my thing.
Oh and I did find the graphics to be weirdly sloppy looking, I can't quite put my finger on it. They aren't bad per se but something in there makes me think of a scribbled notebook even though the graphics are nothing like that.
Disgaea Infinite
When I first saw the game's title, I immediately thought this new Disgaea entry was going to be a big crossover, featuring wild battles and absurd damage numbers like the main SRPG series, basically, hours spent figuring out the best way to grind just to see my team dish out billions of points and take down god-tier enemies.
But after trying out Disgaea Infinite, I found out it’s actually a pretty obscure visual novel set in Laharl’s Castle. The story uses characters from Disgaea 1 and 3, and you play as a Prinny’s soul desperately trying to escape horrendous working conditions.
The core mechanic is neat: you possess different characters to explore the plot, aiming for one of 14 possible endings. While 'inside' someone, you can sometimes influence their decisions, which affects how things play out. It’s important to choose who to possess at the right moment, or disaster (usually Laharl flipping out and punishing Prinnies even more) can strike.
To help navigate all the branching storylines, the game has a timeline that marks major events, tracks routes you’ve taken, and flags decisions where you changed someone’s mind. There are options to skip dialogue or fast-forward, but strangely, you can't jump freely around the timeline, only to certain Prinnies, or back to the start in my hour-long playthrough's case.
The visual novel is relatively short (about 6–8 hours, according to HowLongToBeat), which makes the trial-and-error less tedious, but after an hour of play and landing the most embarrassing ending, I’m not sure how much depth there is left.
Still, if you like Disgaea’s trademark over-the-top humor, there’s plenty of it here! It made me realize I really should finish Disgaea 1 before coming back for a second round with Infinite.
This looks wild! I was aware of the 1,000 Prinny game but had no idea there was a VN too.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
I am so bad. Please,
God,Satan,literally anyone with a good FAQ on how to get into these games and not die every 15 minutes, help.I’m currently making my way through this game (about 15 hours in). The first few hours are absolutely brutal, but it does get easier later on. My advice is to keep fusing demons to keep your team as powerful as possible and also make good use of buffs and debuffs in battle. This is crucial in SMT games: you don’t want the enemy to start piling buffs and debuffs.
the first few hours of SMT4 hit like a truck, after that the game gets easier, I don't know how I manage to beat that part it has been years since I played it.
But good luck, I enjoyed the game a lot, don't give up.
Beyond All Reason has been occupying all of me and my friends free time for the past month now. It's one of the best RTSs I've ever played. I never played Total Annihilation, and played maybe an hour or two of Supreme Commander, so that style of game was totally fresh for me.
The sheer amount of units and strategies you can use in each faction is really overwhelming but pretty intuitive, and the game has far more depth than I have time to devote to it.
I will say though, for a small community centered around an open source game, the community, at least in the public games I've played, can be pretty toxic. I get hints of MOBAesque attitudes, which makes sense because the multiplayer seems to tend towards big 8v8 games where everyone has a defined role and lane.
Still, I imagine I'm going to be playing this game in some capacity for a while.
I'm not very good at RTS games and so I don't think I'd enjoy playing competitively if people take it too seriously or are toxic. But I'm curious how fun it is to play against the AI?
Pretty fun. We did that for the first two or three weeks and it's still a blast
Awesome! I'll check it out
I've been playing a lot of Bartender DS
*hic*
Just kidding. But I did finally find the name of a DS game that has been eluding me:
Hotel Dusk: Room 215. edit: actually, wait no. I need to do more research...
There are a lot of NDS and GC games that I never got around to start playing. So my goal this week is to play No More Heroes at least once.
edit2: Did you know they made a version of Carcassonne for DS?! bonkers! And Catan!
After a hiatus from PC gaming that lasted most of a decade, I picked up Elite Dangerous Odyssey (after rage quitting on console back when Frontier abandoned PlayStation).
It took me only a couple of hours for all the old reflexes to come back. All the new content and game mechanics have been a pleasant path of discovery. Exploring and cataloguing xenobiology particularly scratches the itch for me.
After spending about a month or a little more playing Cyberpunk and the Phantom Liberty DLC (which I enjoyed, despite flaws and a somewhat weak/predictable story), I dove into a couple "palette cleansers" games before turning to another longer adventure.
I played A Story Beside, which I believe someone here gifted me, and I apologize for not remembering who that was. I enjoyed it! It's a cute, cozy life sim about, essentially, an NPC from another adventure game. Somehow I managed to make it to the end without making any lasting relationships or friendships, but I don't think I regret any of the decisions I made.
I also am in the first 90 minutes or so of Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I beat the first Ori game last year, and already my impression is: damn, this is such a good metroidvania. Looking forward to spending more time with this.
Been playing Grounded 2. It's a lot of fun but also incredibly buggy. Which you may expect from an Early Access title, except it's the basic stuff. Stuff that works great in the first game and therefore should have no issue with the sequel since it's just building on top of it.
Picking up resources is clunky and unresponsive, and combat is slow and clunky as well. Both of these were snappy and satisfying in the first game.
Base building is so incredibly broken. Stuff disappears, cut grass comes back but only visually, and sometimes flickers like crazy. Doors don't open right. Objects don't line up right or can't be placed in places where they should be able to.
All of this worked fantastic in the first game yet for some reason it's so janky now. What happened? So I'm not a fan of that. I know it'll be fixed with time but it makes no sense how they broke these systems that already worked and we're polished.
We're not very far in story wise, so can't speak much to that. Have done a fair bit of exploring and upgrading. I'm a little disappointed that we can only get tier 2 tools right now. Would've nice to have tier 3 to start EA, since they have tier 3 objects around that you can't do anything with in this version of the game now (Pinecones are right there in the starting area for example).
But the new bugs are cool, the new map is intriguing, and I'm excited for where everything will go. Grounded 1 is one of my all time greats, and with some updates and content as the game develops I can see 2 getting to that point as well.
Stormgate
Veterans of Blizzard RTS have formed a studio to create a spiritual successor to WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 2. The game is leaving Early Access delivering on 2 of their 4 "Core Pillar" promises - Campaign (single-player) and Competitive (1v1) are "done" (though people are complaining that tier 3 units are not there yet). Co-op (3v3) and Custom (map editor) are in alpha, however they are technically available to try to early versions. Apparently the game was version 0.6 but when people made a stink about that, they switched to using internal version names instead of numbers.
I tried the campaign. The first 3 missions are free, with 9 more available if you pay for them. I was extremely disappointed with them. The story feels bland and dumb. The voice acting feels mostly flat or hammy (with the exception of Blockade). On the [wc3 - sc2] scale it tilts heavily to the wc3 side, with slower movement and hero units being a focus. I don't feel like the missions did a good job of developing the characters and connecting the story to their mechanics. The third mission is a caravan escort mission, which... WHY are we still doing escort missions? There were a couple of annoying pathfinding issues, 1 was a group splitting off with half going into unexplored enemy territory. This was right outside the front door of my base. The other was for a bonus objective, I could repair turrets on the map, which it gave me (half?) vision of, and I could right-click on a with a worker, but the worker would only move to it rather than repair, so later when I check back the worker is just sitting there. Once the worker got close I got full vision and could right click on it again (or use the repair button) to start repairing.
Definitely did not secure a sale from me for the remaining missions, and I'm not even gonna touch the 1v1. Game needs another year or several of polish, and even then I don't think it's going to be as good as sc2. But I weirdly want it to succeed or stay afloat long enough for someone to license their engine or use the map editor to make a better game lol.
I am now a level 13 orc rogue in WoW Classic (20th anniversary server). Oh no, I thought I had kicked my cocaine addiction...
For real, though, I created a few characters this week and didn't have one that stuck, but then I created a Horde (I have never played Horde) and it's actually giving me a fun sense of adventure since I've never experienced horde quests and zones. It's actually pulling me in unlike the same alliance quests/zones I've done a hundred times. I'm still a dwarf at heart, but I'm enjoying being an orc right now.
I have been meaning to post here and keep forgetting. So here are a few games I have been playing:
Finished Cipher Zero. Logic puzzles where the fun is figuring out the rules. Nice progression, and it's very pretty, too.
It's summer holidays here, and my son has been enjoying Lunch Time LAN Party, so most of my gaming has been games that he or his sister like to play.
UpGun is a cute little FPS game where you deathmatch in an arena, and get upgrades between rounds. It's free, fun, and there are some truly busted combinations, and the waiting room is an obstacle course.
Perfect Heist 2 is a heist game of cops vs robbers where in general the robbers blend in to the civilians, and the cops do not, and the robbers have to gain a particular amount of money to win. If the police shoot the wrong person, they usually lose, and you have to identify who is not an NPC and take care them out.
Emergency Response: Liberty County is a Roblox game that is sort of a GTA-esque game. You can be a civilian with a job, a civilian criminal, a police officer / sheriff, a firefighter / paramedic, or a department of transportation worker. It is kind of basic, but for a game that's made in Roblox, it's not that bad. There are a lot of different cars and guns, which is good for a cars 'n' guns game, and there are a bunch of roleplay servers if that's the sort of thing you want to do.
In the evenings when I'm playing a game for myself, I caved in and bought Monster Train 2 which has been a nice successor to Monster Train 1, which I greatly enjoyed. I haven't progressed very far at all, but I"m looking forward to exploring it; if it's anything like MT1, I'll probably play it on and off for a couple of years. It's a deck builder where the conceit is that you're on a train, and you're defending your train from whatever bad guys are trying to get on your train. There's more to the story than that, but there are different clans that you can choose to mish mash together and make your deck, and there's a bit of randomness to the deck generation as well, so each run is a bit different.
I've been on holiday this week but before I left I got a few hours in...
Death Stranding
I got this on the summer sale and I played a little between playing Motorsport Manager.
I didn't know anything about it (or any other Hideo Kojima game to be fair) except it has a lot of cut scenes, it's kinda weird and it takes a while to get good.
I'm only on the first "chapter" but holy jesus it's madness. It feels like I'm watching a fever dream. Everything about the direction of the game does feel carefully placed... I'm on Hideo's wild ride. It's just proper nuts.
The gameplay seems fine enough from the little I've played. Anyone who's read my posts before knows I play stupid simulator games so this is basically my kind of game anyway.
I'm looking forward to giving a more detailed report of my thoughts as I get deeper into Hideo Kojima's dream/nightmare.
I also played more Motorsport Manager and Crime Simulator but nothing really to note here from last time.
"Omelette You Cook" is a new balatro esque game I have been playing quite a bit of. It has the basic gameplay of the Papa's broswer games, which is adding Ingredients to cute art of X food, X being omelettes in this case, trying to fill customer requests. This game slaps balatro like synergies to that concept. Tomatos give three points, but lose four points if they touch another tomato. Broccoli gives two points per vegetable its touching, but loses two points per meat that it's touching. There a lot of different ingridients and modifiers, as well as relics that affect the scoring of different types of ingridients and helps shape your playstyle for a given run.
On all difficulties above the default, the conveyor that dispenses ingridients is always moving, giving you limited time to make your choice. You need to be thinking on your feet and move fast to get everything you need set up well on the omelette. It scratches the same itch as balatro for me, but using different parts of the brain, namely maximizing space efficiency and on the fly planning. Its a lot of fun and for 7.99$ i highly recommend any fans of this genre of roguelike give it a shot.
Outside of that, i have also been playing a new solo playthrough of Abiotic Factor, for its 1.0 launch. I made it a decent way in with some friends last year, playing along as early access updates dropped, but due to a lack of interest on picking that save back up, i decided to run a solo save instead. Upped the difficulty and went a construction flavored class to try and anchor a playstyle around defensive play, as i would not have the numbers needed in the late game.
This game is a triumph though. The setting and map design is well put together and compelling, and the whole aesthetic and vibe is dripping with tragic aura. Even though i know most of the early layout, its still fun to explore and slowly conquer the facility again. Crafting is actually something i like to engage with in this game, which is not usually the case for survival games especially recently. The aesthetic of everything you craft being cobbled together from office supplies and duct tape really works for me, and keeps you guessing on what comes next and what itll be made of. This game was high on my goty last year, and now with a full release, its certainly on the list again.
Valheim
I've had it in my library for years now. I'm not even sure when or why I picked it up, but I have never had the time to give it an honest try until this week. After playing for a few hours, I can confidently say I still don't have enough time to play this game. 😂
I was immediately hooked on the building mechanics. The initial variety of base parts that you unlock early on is plenty to build a lot of really cool basic viking huts. And the snapping points are very obvious and easy to use. Even in the off scenario where a snap point won't work, it's easy to enable manual placement to get the results you want. I've only played a handful of games with base building mechanics, but all of them (save maybe Minecraft) could take notes from Valheim. For the most part the build system just gets out of the way.
The game itself is suprisingly immersive and beautiful given its sort of pixelated graphics. There are some very beautiful shaders and effects at play, and the music is lovely.
The combat is difficult, with a catch. The game wants you to parry attacks and counter at appropriate times while managing stamina. Additionally, the largest improvements in health and stamina come from continuing to consume better and more complex foods that are unlocked. It took a bit to wrap my head around the idea that I don't just get stronger as I progress. I unlock better armor and upgrade combat skills for sure, but without top tier food even early enemies can hit really hard even when I'm wearing upgraded gear. The catch is that there is a dodge-roll mechanic that provides a very generous invincibility window. When timed right nearly all physical attacks mean nothing. It's still very easy to get overwhelmed in a crowd though. This level of combat difficulty is not really my cup of tea, so I have turned a lot of the death consequences off to reduce my anxiety a bit. I have also completely turned off base raids, because who wants to spend hours on a viking village only to have it destroyed by a gang of trolls?
I've also gathered that the game is intended to be played slowly. There are certainly speed runners out there that finish in a few hours, but the vast majority of players have spent hundreds of hours in the game and are still in "mid-game". Part of this is due to combat difficulty I think, but also it's really easy to lose hours building and grinding for resources. There is a fair bit of grind, btw.
Regarding the grind, I've installed some mods to improve the game in subtle ways and fit in better with my busy schedule. Almost all are QoL additions that very easily could (and probably should) be part of the base game.
Some examples:
I still think I would have continued to play the base game even if these mods didn't exist. But the addition has elevated the experience for me from a 7/10 to more of an 8 or even 9.
There is also a very popular multiplayer component that a lot of people love. I don't really have any friends to play this game with (due to the game's age and my limited friend network), but I have heard it's a lot of fun to experience with a small group. I don't really feel anything missing from the single player experience though.
If games like Minecraft, Subnautica, and/or No Man's Sky capture your interest, I'd recommend trying out Valheim to see if it clicks with you.
edits: grammar and spelling
Slay the Spire is getting me bad. I just unlocked everything for The Ironclad, and have ascended two dailies so far (one Ironclad, the other being The Watcher, who I haven't unlocked yet lmao, but she's my favorite to play apparently). I love the deep strategy of it, the pace, and a run is about an hour to win, or if I just get too tired I can leave it for tomorrow. I got it when I got into deckbuilders but Balatro took over my interest, then Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, but I'm hoping to at least ascend all the characters before STS2 comes out.
As is tradition, whenever a new battlefield is announced, I dust off bf4. I'm garbage, but with mini map awareness + years of map knowledge, my K/D is usually okay. Just okay 😅. I've owned it since launch, and one of the rare games I've paid full price for.
Still holds up!
As shooters go, this is probably my favorite. Teams are large enough where it doesn't matter if I suck, or bounce mid match. However, they still are small enough that you can make and feel a difference. There's something for everyone. Crap shot? Run around as a medic throwing smoke, med kits and reviving your guys. Recon + MAV for ridiculous map awareness and explosive device counter, radio beacon to setup better spawn point. Sit second fiddle in a vehicle and get out for quick repairs + support as an engineer. Provide ammo + cover fire, explosive counter as support. And no matter the class, spot everything that breathes.
There's a fair bit of gun play at various ranges for you to find your niche, etc. There's a lot of reasons why it's peak battlefield for a lot of people. I had a blast the first time I unlocked the gol and was peek shooting with iron sights. Felt like I was in an old western defending a wagon train. I still haven't unlocked everything, and eventually TM I'll get around to learning how to fly.
It's also the last battlefield to work on Linux, and while I do maintain a bare metal windows install that I also boot as a VM (mostly for my infinite lightburn free trial), I almost never boot it bare metal anymore :/
I've been playing an obscure browser MMORPG, HighSpell. It's basically a clone of Runescape classic but I've found it kind of enjoyable.
http://www.highspell.com
VoxeLibre never quite sat right with me. It looks like Minecraft but has so many minor differences it always sort of bugged me. Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely amazing that Wuzzy (the maintainer) kept this project a live and put so much work into it. It's amazing.
I always leaned towards Repixture because it's still amazing, but is a more original concept (picked up by Wuzzy for maintenance/extension as well). I sincerely mean it more as a "If you liked that you'll like this" sense, not to try to put VoxeLibre down.
I'll check it out! VoxeLibre has been working out nicely for us, I guess since neither of us have played much Minecraft since the early 2010s, but I've been wanting to try some more Luanti games.